A doctor whose healing touch extends to wild animals

He is an orthopedist and the deputy director of Heshun County People’s Hospital in Shanxi province. He can also be the chairman of the Heshun Ecological Conservation Society. And he spends “many of the cash he earns from treating folks to save wild animals”.

Meet Yang Xiaodang, the 51-year-old doctor with a love for wildlife.

Situated within the Taihang Mountain Range in Shanxi, Heshun has a forest cowl of practically 30 %, a lot increased than the 23 % nationwide common. It can also be house to numerous wild animals together with leopards, roe deer, wild boars and crimson foxes. Yang has guarded all of them for greater than twenty years.

At current, Yang is apprehensive about an eagle owl that he saved one 12 months in the past however has not seen ever since. When the chicken was introduced to him by the workers of the county forestry bureau, it had misplaced one eye and critically injured the opposite after flying right into a high-voltage energy line.

Yang requested an ophthalmologist colleague in his hospital to conduct an eye fixed operation on the chicken. Two months later, the chicken’s injured eye healed beneath the skilled care of Yang, and his ophthalmologist and different colleagues. Soon it was match sufficient to be launched within the wild. But not realizing the destiny of the chicken has been troubling Yang since then.

Yang and his colleagues within the hospital have handled between 300 and 400 injured or sick wild animals over the previous twenty years. One-third of the handled animals recovered and had been launched within the wild, whereas one-third had been despatched to the zoo as they’d developed various kinds of “incapacity”, and the remainder died.

Yang additionally saves wild animals from poachers and native farmers. Once, Yang and another volunteers purchased a ewe to nurse two new child roe deer, which an area farmer had caught and meant to hold as pets. After 5 months’ intensive care, the 2 fawns had been weaned off the ewe’s milk. Later, the volunteers educated the fawns to adapt to the pure setting, and launched them within the wild after being sure that they’d find a way to survive alone.

Yang has additionally been making an attempt to make native farmers perceive that human beings can’t increase wild animals as pets, as a result of their house is within the wild. To achieve this extra convincingly, Yang established a wildlife safety group within the county in 1999. And in 2018, he was elected chairman of the newly based Heshun Ecological Conservation Society. Yang’s spouse is a member of the society, and his daughter works for an environmental safety group.

Thanks to Yang’s efforts, greater than 100 folks have joined the society, which has develop into an necessary platform for the native folks to save wild animals. The bills for saving wild animals are borne by the group and other people, although.

One such ardent wildlife protector is Li Weidong. “I just like the work, it is rather significant. So I do not really feel drained,” Li stated.

Yang has to not solely discover methods to thwart poachers, who’re utilizing new strategies, even superior know-how, to kill or lure wild animals, but in addition considerations in regards to the menace the facility grid poses to wildlife. That’s why he has been main his staff to patrol the mountains at night time and through holidays for the previous two years. He has additionally put in greater than 100 boards with anti-poaching slogans within the forests and rural areas.

Liu Zhibo, who caught two poachers final 12 months, stated: “The extra folks participate in defending wild animals, the extra stress the poachers will really feel.” According to Liu, the work in itself is an effective lesson of life, so when the volunteers see a lifeless leopard cat, its again damaged by a lure, they’re heartbroken in addition to indignant. On the opposite hand, they really feel comfortable to see an eagle recovering from its damage beneath their care, and spreading its wings once more to fly away.

Liu typically takes his younger daughter to watch the volunteers rescue wild animals, within the hope that she is going to study to respect all types of life.

As for Yang, he is aware of that simply asking the native farmers to not hurt wild animals isn’t sufficient, particularly as a result of some wild animals assault their livestock or trigger different injury. So he raises funds to compensate the farmers whose cattle are killed by wild animals akin to leopards, so as to make sure the farmers assist save wildlife.

Yang stated: “Thanks to the joint efforts of all of the folks, we now typically see herds of wild animals foraging at night time by means of our infrared cameras put in on the mountains. The scenes are so lovely.” Yang typically makes use of these movies to increase folks’s consciousness and make them notice the need of harmonious coexistence with wild animals.

Signing off, the orthopedist-cum-wildlife lover stated: “That I may set up the folks to communicate for the wild animals and do one thing for them has made my life worthwhile.”